#AdvancedSEO
The author's views are entirely his or her own
(excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views
of Moz.
Have you noticed it's getting harder and harder to
build referral traffic from Google?
And it's not just that the competition has got
tougher (which it certainly has!).
It's also that Google has moved past its ten blue
links and its organic search results are no longer generating as much traffic
they used to.
How do you adapt? This article teaches you to
optimize your content to one of Google's more recent changes: featured
snippets.
What are featured snippets?
Featured snippets are selected search results that
are featured on top of Google's organic results below the ads in a box.
Featured snippets aim at answering the user's
question right away (hence their other well-known name, "answer
boxes"). Being featured means getting additional brand exposure in search
results.
Here are two studies confirming the claim:
Ben Goodsell reports that the click-through rate
(CTR) on a featured page increased from two percent to eight percent once it's
placed in an answer box, with revenue from organic traffic increasing by 677%.
Eric Enge highlights a 20–30% increase in traffic
for ConfluentForms.com while they held the featured snippet for the query.
Types of featured snippets
There are three major types of featured snippets:
Paragraph (an answer is given in text). It can be
a box with text inside or a box with both text and an image inside.
List (an answer is given in a form of a list)
Table (an answer is given in a table)
Here’s an example of paragraph snippet with an
image:
According to Getstat, the most popular featured
snippet is "paragraph" type:
Featured snippets or answer boxes?
Since we're dealing with a pretty new phenomenon,
the terminology is pretty loose. Many people (including myself) are inclined to
refer to featured snippets as "answer boxes," obviously because
there's an answer presented in a box.
While there's nothing wrong with this terminology,
it creates a certain confusion because Google often gives a "quick
answer" (a definition, an estimate, etc.) on top without linking to the
source:
To avoid confusion, let's stick to the
"featured snippet" term whenever there's a URL featured in the box,
because these present an extra exposure to the linked site (hence they're
important for content publishers):
Do I have a chance to get featured?
According to research by Ahrefs, 99.58% of
featured pages already rank in top 10 of Google. So if you are already ranking
high for related search queries, you have very good chances to get featured.
On the other hand, Getstat claims that 70% of
snippets came from sites outside of the first organic position. So it's
required that the page is ranked in top 10, but it's not required to be #1 to
be featured.
Unsurprisingly, the most featured site is
Wikipedia.org. If there's Wikipedia featured for your search query, it may be
extremely hard to beat that — but it doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
Finally, according to the analysis performed in a
study, the following types of search queries get featured results most often:
DIY processes
Health
Financial
Mathematical
Requirements
Status
Transitional
Ahrefs' study expands the list of popular topics
with their most frequently words that appear in featured snippets:
The following types of search queries usually
don't have answer boxes:
Images and videos
Local
Shopping
To sum up the above studies:
You have chances to get featured for the terms
your pages are already ranking in top 10. Thus, a big part of being featured is
to improve your overall rankings (especially for long-tail informational
queries, which are your lower-hanging fruit)
If your niche is DIY, health or finance, you have
the highest probability of getting featured
Identify all kinds of opportunities to be featured
Start with good old keyword research
Multiple studies confirm that the majority of
featured snippets are triggered by long-tail keywords. In fact, the more words
that are typed into a search box, the higher the probability there will be a
featured snippet.
It's always a good idea to start with researching
your keywords. This case study gives a good step by step keyword research
strategy for a blogger, and this one lists major keyword research tools as
suggested by experts.
When performing keyword research with featured
snippets in mind, note that:
Start with question-type search queries (those
containing question words, like “what,” “why,” “how,” etc.) because these are
the easiest to identify, but don’t stop there...
Target informational intent, not just questions.
While featured snippets aim at answering the user’s question immediately,
question-type queries are not the only types that trigger those featured
results. According to the aforementioned Ahrefs study, the vast majority of
keywords that trigger featured snippets were long-tail queries with no question
words in them.
It helps if you use a keyword research tool that shows
immediately whether a query triggers featured results. I use Serpstat for my
keyword research because it combines keyword research with featured snippet
research and lets me see which of my keywords trigger answer boxes:
You can run your competitor in Serpstat and then
filter their best-performing queries by the presence of answer boxes:
This is a great overview of your future
competition, enabling you to see your competitors' strengths and weaknesses.
Browse Google for more questions
To further explore the topic, be sure to browse
Google's own "People also ask" sections whenever you see one in the
search results. It provides a huge insight into which questions Google deems
related to each topic.
Once you start expanding the questions to see the
answers, more and more questions will be added to the bottom of the box:
Identify search queries where you already rank
high
Your lowest-hanging fruit is to identify which
phrases you already rank highly for. These will be the easiest to get featured
for after you optimize for answer boxes (more on this below).
Google Search Console shows which search queries
send you clicks. To find that report, click "Search Traffic" and then
"Search Analytics."
Check the box to show the position your pages hold
for each one and you'll have the ability to see which queries are your
top-performing ones:
You can then use the filters to find some
question-type queries among those:
Go beyond traditional keyword research tools: Ask
people
All the above methods (albeit great) tackle
already discovered opportunities: those for which you or your competitors are
already ranking high. But how about venturing beyond that? Ask your readers,
customers, and followers how they search and which questions they ask.
MyBlogU: Ask people outside your immediate reach
Move away from your target audience and ask random
people what questions they have on a specific topic and what would be their
concerns. Looking out of the box can always give a fresh perspective.
MyBlogU (disclaimer: I am the founder) is a great
way to do that. Just post a new project in the "Brainstorm" section
and ask members to contribute their thoughts.
Seed Keywords: Ask your friends and followers
Seed Keywords is a simple tool that allows you to
discover related keywords with help from your friends and followers. Simply
create a search scenario, share it on social media, and ask your followers to
type in the keywords they would use to solve it.
Try not to be too leading with your search
scenario. Avoid guiding people to the search phrase you think they should be
using.
Here's an example of a scenario:
And here are the suggestions from real people:
Obviously, you can create similar surveys with
SurveyMonkey or Google Forms, too.
Monitor questions people ask on Twitter
Another way to discover untapped opportunities is
to monitor questions on Twitter. Its search supports the ? search operator that
will filter results to those containing a question. Just make sure to put a
space between your search term and ?.
I use Cyfe to monitor and archive Twitter results
because it provides a minimal dashboard which I can use to monitor an unlimited
number of Twitter searches.
Once you lack article ideas, simply log in to Cyfe
to view the archive and then proceed to the above keyword research tools to
expand on any idea.
I use spreadsheets to organize questions and
keyword phrases I discover (see more on this below). Some of these questions
may become a whole piece of content, while others will be subsections of
broader articles:
I don’t try to analyze search volume to decide
whether any of those questions deserve to be covered in a separate article or a
subsection. (Based on the Ahrefs research and my own observations, there is no
direct correlation between the popularity of the term and whether it will
trigger a featured snippet).
Instead, I use my best judgement (based on my
niche knowledge and research) as to how much I will be able to tell to answer
each particular question. If it’s a lot, I’ll probably turn into a separate
article and use keyword research to identify subsections of the future piece.
Optimizing for featured snippets
Start with on-page SEO
There is no magic button or special markup which
will make sure your site gets featured. Of course, it's a good idea to start
with non-specific SEO best practices, simply because being featured is only
possible when you rank high for the query.
Randy Milanovic did a good overview of tactics of
making your content findable. Eric Brantner over at Coschedule has put together
a very useful SEO checklist, and of course never forget to go through Moz’s SEO
guide.
How about structured markup?
Many people would suggest using Schema.org (simply
because it's been a "thing" to recommend adding schema for anything
and everything) but the aforementioned Ahrefs study shows that there's no
correlation between featured results and structured markup.
That being said, the best way to get featured is
to provide a better answer. Here are a few actionable tips:
1. Aim at answering each question concisely
My own observation of answer boxes has led me to
think that Google prefers to feature an answer which was given within one
paragraph.
The study by AJ Ghergich cites that the average
length of a paragraph snippet is 45 words (the maximum is 97 words), so let it
be your guideline as to how long each answer should be in order to get
featured:
This doesn't mean your articles need to be one
paragraph long. On the contrary, these days Google seems to give preference to
long-form content (also known as "cornerstone content," which is
obviously a better way to describe it because it's not just about length)
that's broken into logical subsections and features attention-grabbing images.
Even if you don’t believe that cornerstone content receives any special
treatment in SERPs, focusing on long articles will help you to cover more
related questions within one piece (more on that below).
All you need to do is to adjust your blogging
style just a bit:
Ask the question in your article (that may be a
subheading)
Immediately follow the question with a
one-paragraph answer
Elaborate further in the article
This tactic may also result in higher user
retention because it makes any article better structured and thus a much easier
read. To quote AJ Ghergich,
When you use data to fuel topic ideation, content
creation becomes more about resources and less about brainstorming.
2. Be factual and organize well
Google loves numbers, steps and lists. We've seen
this again and again: More often than not, answer boxes will list the actual
ingredients, number of steps, time to cook, year and city of birth, etc.
In your paragraph introducing the answer to the
question, make sure to list useful numbers and names. Get very factual.
In fact, the aforementioned study by AJ Ghergich
concluded that comparison charts and lists are an easier way to get featured
because Google loves structured content. In fact, even for branded queries
(where a user is obviously researching a particular brand), Google would pick
up a table from another site (not the answer from the brand itself) if that
other site has a table:
This only shows how much Google loves
well-structured, factual, and number-driven content.
There's no specific markup to structure your
content. Google seems to pick up <table>, <ol>, and <ul> well
and doesn't need any other pointers.
3. Make sure one article answers many similar
questions
In their research of featured snippets, Ahrefs
found that once a page gets featured, it's likely to get featured in lots of
similar queries. This means it should be structured and worded the way it
addresses a lot of related questions.
Google is very good at determining synonymic and
closely related questions, so should be you. There's no point in creating a
separate page answering each specific question.
Creating one solid article addressing many related
questions is a much smarter strategy if you aim at getting featured in answer
boxes. This leads us to the next tactic:
4. Organize your questions properly
To combine many closely related questions in one
article, you need to organize your queries properly. This will also help you
structure your content well.
I have a multi-level keyword organization strategy
that can be applied here as well:
A generic keyword makes a section or a category of
the blog
A more specific search query becomes the title of
the article
Even more specific queries determine the
subheadings of the article and thus define its structure
There will be multiple queries that are so closely
related that they will all go under a single subheading
For example:
Serpstat helps me a lot when it comes to both
discovering an article idea and then breaking it into subtopics. Check out its
"Questions" section. It will provide hundreds of questions containing
your core term and then generate a tag cloud of other popular terms that come
up in those questions:
Clicking any word in the tag cloud will filter
results down to those questions that only have that word in them. These are
subsections for your article:
Here's a good example of how related questions can
help you structure the article:
5. Make sure to use eye-grabbing images
Paragraph featured snippets with images are
ridiculously eye-catching, even more so than regular featured featured
snippets. Honestly, I wasn't able to identify how to add an image so that it's
featured. I tried naming it differently and I tried marking it as
"featured" in the Wordpress editor. Google seems to pick up a random
image from the page without me being able to point it to a better version.
That being said, the only way to influence that is
to make sure ALL your in-article images are eye-catching, branded, and
annotated well, so that no matter which one Google ends up featuring, it will
look nice. Here’s a great selection of Wordpress plugins that will allow you to
easily visualize your content (put together graphs, tables, charts, etc.) while
working on a piece.
You can use Bannersnack to create eye-catching
branded images; I love their image editing functionality. You can quickly
create graphics there, then resize them to reuse as banners and social media
images and organize all your creatives in folders:
6. Update and re-upload the images (Wordpress)
Wordpress adds dates to image URLs, so even if you
update an article with newer information the images can be considered kind of
old. I managed to snatch a couple of paragraph featured snippets with images
once I started updating my images, too:
7. Monitor how you are doing
Ahrefs lets you monitor which queries your domain
is featured for, so keep an eye on these as they grow and new ones appear:
Conclusion
It takes a lot of research and planning and you
cannot be sure when you'll see the results (especially if you don't have too
many top 10 rankings just yet) but think about this way: Being featured in
Google search results is your incentive to work harder on your content. You'll
achieve other important goals on your way there:
You'll discover hundreds of new content ideas (and
thus will rank for a wider variety of various long-tail keywords)
You'll learn to research each topic more
thoroughly (and thus will build more incoming links because people tend to link
to indepth articles)
You'll learn to structure your articles better
(and thus achieve a lower bounce rate because it will be easier to read your
articles)
Update: We have released a featured snippet
optimization tool. With it, you can see exactly what your featured snippet
opportunities are and what it may take to grab each of them (based on where the
featured page ranks organically, where your page ranks and what type of
featured snippet to optimize for.)
Shakti Bareth — |
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